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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

U.S. fiscal talks stumble as lawmakers race against clock

By Richard Cowan and Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Negotiations in Congress to end the fiscal impasse sputtered on Tuesday, leaving both chambers grasping for a way to reopen the government and raise the country's borrowing authority with a Thursday deadline drawing near.

The Senate halted discussions on its own plan, as it waited for the fractious Republican-controlled House of Representatives to come up with an alternative proposal ahead of the October 17 deadline, when the U.S. Treasury says the government will reach its borrowing limit.

Senate leaders had been close to a deal that would reopen the government and raise the debt limit until early 2014, while the initial alternative plan proposed by House Republican leaders failed to gain enough support in a closed-door meeting for the House to proceed.

"There are a lot of opinions about what direction to go. There have been no decisions about exactly what we will do," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters after the meeting.

"We're going to continue to work with our members on both sides of the aisle to try to make sure that there is no issue of default, and to get our government reopened," he said.

The disarray among House Republicans raised questions about what the House will be able to pass. Conservative House members, driven by support from Tea Party small-government activists, have demanded changes to Obama's signature healthcare law as part of any budget deal.

Those demands sparked the shutdown that began with the dawn of the new fiscal year on October 1, temporarily throwing hundreds of thousands of government employees out of work.

If Congress fails to reach a deal by Thursday, checks would likely go out on time for a short while for everyone from bondholders to workers who are owed unemployment benefits. But analysts warn that a default on government obligations could quickly follow, potentially causing the U.S. financial sector to freeze up and threatening the global economy.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell halted talks while House Republicans tried to sort out what they would support, Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told reporters.

"We were on track and Boehner stepped in," he said. "McConnell is waiting on Boehner and Boehner is waiting on his caucus."

After Durbin's comments, markets got increasingly nervous about the prospects of a last-minute deal.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.55 percent in late afternoon trade. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was trading down 0.4 percent.

The House Republican proposal initially floated on Tuesday would have funded the government through January 15, and raised the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling by enough to cover the nation's borrowing needs through February 7, similar to the Senate plan, aides said.

But unlike the Senate, it would include a two-year suspension of the medical device tax included in Obama's healthcare law, and a requirement that members of Congress and the administration be covered under the law.

The House version also would not allow the U.S. Treasury to renew its extraordinary cash management measures to stretch borrowing capacity for months, which had tentatively been allowed under the Senate plan.

The White House and Senate Democrats quickly rejected the House draft plan as not workable.

'PARTISAN ATTEMPT' TO APPEASE TEA PARTY

Reid said the Republican plan was "partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans who forced the government to shut down in the first place."

"I am very disappointed with John Boehner who once again tried to preserve his role at the expense of the country," Reid said.

But Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has blamed House Republicans for the shutdown, blasted the White House and Senate Democrats for promptly rejecting Boehner's latest plan.

"I urge my Democratic colleagues, let's sit down and work this out," McCain declared, his voice rising. "Let's get this resolved."

"To categorically reject what the House of Representatives and the speaker are doing - and I think he is pretty courageous in what he's doing - in my view is not serving the American people," McCain said.

Obama was due to meet with House Democratic leaders at 3:15 p.m. (1915 GMT) to discuss their options.

Before the House action, Reid had said he was optimistic about reaching a final deal this week.

"There are productive negotiations going on with the Republican leader. I'm confident that we'll be able to reach a comprehensive agreement this week in time to avert a catastrophic default on the nation's bills," Reid said on the Senate floor.

Ratings firms have not yet revealed any plans to downgrade U.S. government debt.

Marie Cavanaugh, S&P's managing director for sovereign ratings, said on Tuesday during a panel discussion hosted by Democratic Representative Maxine Waters, "Standard & Poor's thinks that the current impasse over the debt ceiling and the continuing resolution is unlikely to change our rating, which is AA+ with a stable outlook."

Numerous polls show Republicans have taken a hit in opinion polls since the standoff began and the government shutdown October 1. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Monday found that 74 percent of Americans disapprove of the way congressional Republicans have handled the standoff, compared with a 53 percent disapproval rating for Obama.

Another survey released by Gallup on Tuesday showed American confidence in the U.S. economy fell another five points last week as the government shutdown continued.

The crisis is the latest in a series of budget battles in recent years that have hurt consumer confidence and weighed on the economy. A Monday estimate by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank, said the uncertainty from the frequent showdowns had boosted the unemployment rate by 0.6 of a percentage point, or the equivalent of 900,000 jobs since late 2009.

(Additional reporting by David Lawder, Susan Heavey, Amanda Becker; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Karey Van Hall, Grant McCool and Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-senators-hint-possible-fiscal-deal-tuesday-004610122--sector.html
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What's best for depressed pregnant women and their infants?

Public release date: 14-Oct-2013
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Contact: marla Paul
marla-paul@northwestern.edu
312-503-8928
Northwestern University

National experts will explore if antidepressants for mom improve outcomes for babies

CHICAGO --- Do the benefits of treating depressed pregnant women with antidepressants outweigh the risks of the drug exposure to their babies in terms of neonatal health and long-term development?

That hotly debated question from scientific and ethical perspectives will be at the center of Northwestern Medicine's 2013 Perinatal Mental Health Meeting Nov. 6 to 8 in Chicago. National experts from various fields will present new research findings on perinatal depression as well as offer workshops in how to best treat it with psychotherapy. They also hope to launch perinatal depression as a new separate clinical discipline.

Perinatal mental health is an evolving new field of research about a huge public health problem: 10 to 14 percent of young women have depression during the perinatal period and one out of 12 pregnant women will be treated with antidepressants.

A novel event at the meeting will be a demonstration by masters-level clinicians and an actress showing new evidence-based behavioral psychotherapy techniques. Women with the disorder have altered emotional responses compared to major depression and require a different therapeutic approach. The actress will portray the true story of an actual patient who suffered from perinatal depression.

"What's the optimal treatment for pregnant women with depression to improve outcomes for their infants?" asked Northwestern Medicine psychiatrist Katherine L. Wisner, M.D., the director of the conference. "Does the benefit of treating women for depression with medication outweigh the risk to the baby? That's the critical question we have not yet answered."

Wisner, a leading scientist in perinatal depression, said a goal of the meeting is to move closer to a conclusion. Clinicians also are trying to develop a specialty of perinatal psychiatry or perinatal mental health professionals, as exists in the United Kingdom and Australia, Wisner said.

Wisner is director of Northwestern's Asher Center for the Study and Treatment of Depressive Disorders and the Norman and Helen Asher Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She's also a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

"We must remember the illnesses we see can be fatal," Wisner said. Uncontrolled depression can result in low birth weight, preterm birth, suicide, loss of interpersonal relationships, divorce and loss of a job. Conversely, the risks of antidepressants on the fetus can include preterm birth, restlessness and newborn rigidity and tremor.

Wisner talked about several pregnant patients who committed suicide after they stopped taking their medications either on their own or with the knowledge of their physicians.

The meeting, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, will include the following topics:

New research about how the exposure and experience the fetus has during growth in utero programs its lifelong health -- a new area known as fetal programming
Psychological research about the effect of severe stress and anxiety on fetal development
How to evaluate the risk and benefits of antidepressant treatment for each individual pregnant patient
Brain imaging studies in maternal mental health
New psychotherapy techniques: prevention of depression in pregnancy with mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy, a web-based approach for treatment of postpartum depression, face-to-face psychotherapy and a telephone-based approach

###

Conference information:

http://perinatalmentalhealthmeeting.com

NORTHWESTERN NEWS: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

What's best for depressed pregnant women and their infants?

Public release date: 14-Oct-2013
[

| E-mail

|

Share

]

Contact: marla Paul
marla-paul@northwestern.edu
312-503-8928
Northwestern University

National experts will explore if antidepressants for mom improve outcomes for babies

CHICAGO --- Do the benefits of treating depressed pregnant women with antidepressants outweigh the risks of the drug exposure to their babies in terms of neonatal health and long-term development?

Wisner talked about several pregnant patients who committed suicide after they stopped taking their medications either on their own or with the knowledge of their physicians.

The meeting, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, will include the following topics:

New research about how the exposure and experience the fetus has during growth in utero programs its lifelong health -- a new area known as fetal programming
Psychological research about the effect of severe stress and anxiety on fetal development
How to evaluate the risk and benefits of antidepressant treatment for each individual pregnant patient
Brain imaging studies in maternal mental health
New psychotherapy techniques: prevention of depression in pregnancy with mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy, a web-based approach for treatment of postpartum depression, face-to-face psychotherapy and a telephone-based approach

###

Conference information:

http://perinatalmentalhealthmeeting.com

NORTHWESTERN NEWS: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/

[

| E-mail

|

Share

]

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/nu-wbf101413.php
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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

'Jump boxes' improve security, if you set them up right

With malicious hackers and malware infesting nearly every enterprise network these days, "jump boxes" have become very popular. A jump box is a specially secured computer that administrators must (or should) log on to in order to gain access to other computers and administrate them. The hope is that these jump boxes are specially secured -- and are less likely to get exploited by hackers or malware.

Jump boxes can decrease risk, but you need to implement their special protections properly. Many enterprises start with the best of intentions, but when I audit jump boxes, I often see a jumble of weak security policies and high-risk behaviors that make them just as insecure as a regular user's PC.

[ Take a tour of the latest threats and what you can do to stop them in InfoWorld's Malware Deep Dive Report. | Learn how to secure your systems with InfoWorld's Security Central newsletter. ]

In the computer security world, a basic premise underlies setting up a "secure environment": Systems of lower trust should never be able to modify or control systems of higher trust or importance. Most jump boxes tend to break this basic rule because the computers people use to connect to jump boxes are less trustworthy than the jump boxes themselves.

Often, PCs that connect to jump boxes are open to the Internet all day long and can be as infected and exploited as any other computer in your environment. What good is a jump box if the computer connecting to it has a keylogging Trojan copying every password or smartcard token you use? Your jump box and the computer linking to it -- let's call it the "originating computer" for this discussion -- should both be highly secure systems.

Here are the protective measures you should take for jump boxes and the systems that connect to them.

Security hardened
Most of today's operating systems and applications come fairly well secured. Don't mess it up. Consider configuring the originating computer and jump server with the "high security" settings if they exist. You want to enforce only the best and most secure protocols and options.

Strong authentication
If you use regular passwords, they should be long and complex (15 characters or more). Try to require smartcards or other two-factor authentication methods for all elevated users. If you're managing multiple environments (that is, different forests), make sure logon credentials are not shared among environments. If you use smartcards, key fobs, or other two-factor authentication, make sure those aren't shared, either. Yes, it'll be harder to administrate multiple environments. But if you share that stuff, why have different environments in the first place?

No browsing the Internet
If I check your jump box and see it has a browser installed or can browse to the Internet unhindered, then you've failed the audit. Browsing the Internet is a high-risk activity that should not be allowed either on the jump box or the originating computer. I know many of you probably use your regular workstation to connect to jump boxes. This is a bad idea. Use a separate computer (or VM) to connect to your jump box. That originating computer should not be able to browse the Internet to any site; if you allow it to connect only to vendor sites and legitimate driver download sites, that's OK.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/jump-boxes-improve-security-if-you-set-them-right-228742?source=rss_infoworld_top_stories_
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Honeywell's Wi-Fi Thermostats Tell You When to Turn It Down and Save

With people plugging more and more devices into the power grid, public utilities across the country are finding it increasingly difficult to effectively manage during peak demand. Honeywell's line of Wi-Fi-connected smart thermostats are now doing their part to help.

How Xbox Live's Cloud Computing Could Make Games That Last Forever

At Microsoft's huge Xbox reveal last spring, the company made a big hubub about the 300,000 cloud servers it would be adding to help speed up GPU and CPU heavy tasks. But in an interview with Gizmodo, Xbox Live Lead Programmer John Bruno detailed how it could change the way we think about gaming in the future.

Senate rejects Democratic debt limit extension

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has rejected a Democratic effort to extend the government's ability to borrow money through next year.

Before the vote, Republican senators said Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have begun negotiations aimed at extending the country's borrowing limit and ending the 12-day-old government shutdown.

It was a near party-line vote — 53-45 — that derailed the Democratic measure. The 53 votes were seven short of the 60 required to overcome Republican objections to considering the measure.

Earlier in the day, House Speaker John Boehner told fellow Republicans that his talks with President Barack Obama have stalled.

The administration has warned it will deplete its borrowing authority by Oct. 17, risking a damaging federal default, unless Congress acts.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-rejects-democratic-debt-limit-extension-164608006--politics.html
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Monday, October 14, 2013

Markets steady as debt ceiling deadline looms

LONDON (AP) — Three days from a deadline to increase the U.S. debt ceiling, investors remain focused on developments in Washington. Most think a deal will be reached in time and stock markets were holding up Monday.

The U.S. has to increase the amount of debt it can carry by Oct. 17 or face a possible default on its debt, a scenario that could derail the U.S. economic recovery and roil international markets.

Negotiations between Republicans and Democrats over the weekend failed to reach a conclusion either on the raising of the debt ceiling or the partial shutdown of the U.S. government, which has now entered a third week.

Despite the possible nightmare scenario of a U.S. debt default, markets have proven more resilient than many analysts had expected.

"Like the fiscal cliff in 2012 and the last debt ceiling scare in 2011, the view remains that it will all work out, eventually," said Michael Ingram, market strategist at BGC Partners. "They are probably right of course, but it still feels that equity markets have been approaching this issue with unusual complacency."

In Europe, Germany's DAX closed flat at 8,723.81 while the CAC-40 in France rose 0.1 percent to 4,222.96. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares ended 0.3 percent higher at 6,507.65.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.2 percent at 15,211 while the broader S&P 500 index fell the same rate to 1,700.

Despite the public holiday, developments in Washington remain the focus of attention in financial markets, with Senate leaders from both sides set for further discussions. Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke by phone Sunday but failed to agree on a deal to raise the nation's borrowing authority above the $16.7 trillion debt limit.

Earlier, trading in Asia was muted, with markets in Tokyo and Hong Kong closed for holidays.

Outside of those major financial centers, China's Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.4 percent to 2,237.77 while South Korea's Kospi was off 0.2 percent at 2,020.27. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.4 percent to 5,207.90.

Trading was also subdued in other financial markets. In currencies, the euro was up 0.2 percent at $1.3577 while the dollar was steady at 98.24 yen. In the oil markets, a price of benchmark New York crude was down 21 cents at $101.81 a barrel.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/markets-steady-debt-ceiling-deadline-looms-162528402--finance.html
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